As good as it gets

I wish I had a water-proof latptop for the shower. It’s where I do my best thinking in the morning and the thoughts just flow. Ideas for everything, including this blog, just flow. Must be the combination of hot water and caffeine…

This weekend was as good as it gets. Saturday, Sue and I slept in. Morning coffee on the couch.

Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk

I hate talking on the phone, but Sue and I got to know each other back when by talking for sometimes two hours on the phone. Just before we’d hang up one of us would say, my God, do you know we’ve been talking for almost two hours...!?

It’s still the same.

She’s a remarkable woman. Funny, smart, pretty. She’s lived and traveled all over the world, speaks Japanese, Spanish, and a smattering of other languages including whatever it is they speak in Sri Lanka, and it ain’t Sri Lankan. She loves to read, and is curious about everything in life. When we first started seeing each other, I told her she really didn’t want me, that I was a train wreck. She told this to a friend who said, well, at least he’s a responsible train wreck. Score a point for me. I’m still not sure what she sees in me sometimes.

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys
Don’t let ‘em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Make ‘em be doctors and lawyers and such.

We headed into Boston, I love riding the train with her, just the feeling of moving with her by my side. Sue bound for South Station and New York, me for the South End and my acting class. Class is what I need to get motivated about acting again. Working with talented people who are serious about their craft. Not people trying to work out their neuroses on stage. Or running away from life in the real world by living “someone else’s” life on stage. This is the real world. This is the theater. Let’s not confuse the two. People looking for the truth in themselves and in the world.

That bears repeating: People not afraid of looking for the truth in themselves.

During class my oldest left a message that she’d stop by for dinner. I love shopping for food, knowing that a loved one will be eating. Choosing each morsel with care. Sustenance for the body as well as the soul is important. Feed the soul but don’t forget to feed the stomach, too. I’m not a bad cook; not great. Simple is best. Baked haddock with rice.

I said, I'd offer you a beer but I know you're underage. We laughed. She's away at school and has already told me about the fake ID business there. What do you drink when you go out? I asked. Long Island Ice Tea. I laughed.

And we talked. Al and I talk about everything. About family and being in love and her friends and her roommate and my friends. Hopes and dreams. I’m 51 and she’s almost 19, and we’re alike in so many ways because in so many ways we’re starting our lives. Never lose that: that sense of newness and your ideals and wanting to always live life to the fullest.

Then she left to go visit a friend who just had a baby. New beginnings and lives everywhere.

So Saturday night I stayed home alone and played guitar. Does that sound sad? Being alone on a Saturday night? No, I was content. A day filled with loved ones and learning new things about myself and my art, which is just really another word for passions. And toward the end, I sat on the floor of my apartment surrounded by guitars and scribbled notes and downloaded notes and books, my dog drowsing next to me, after discovering new ways to get sounds from an acoustic guitar and it had so much to do with how I was feeling and what I had experienced that day. That is finding truth, and it reflecting in your art.

Sunday was in Boston with my other daughter. She’s the city kid. I took her to my office and showed her around. We wandered the south part of the city, froze to death, had chowder at the Black Rose, a place for tourists but Kathryn and I are so at home in Boston that we live in our own little world. Tourists are like greenhead flies on the beach in the summer: annoyances.

The train ride home was a sleepy one.